As part of BMW’s long-standing commitment to its customer base, it frequently hosts events for customers to experience its cars in their unrestricted element. For its winter 2024 campaign, it hosted customers on the snow and ice of New Zealand.

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Not only was it promised that you’d get to experience the power and handling of the BMW M3, M3 Touring, X3 M40I and the Mini Countryman, but you’d also get to see some of the gorgeous sights the South Island of New Zealand has to offer.

As someone who has only ever been to the North Island, the trip was already worth it for me as my flight glided through the gorgeous snow-covered Alps around the Queenstown region.

BMW Events offers two packages for the BMW Snow and Ice Experience: Luxury, which is $6500pp, and which includes two nights’ accommodation, event functions, a helicopter ride up to the proving grounds, a 4WD snow bus transfer, a BMW jacket, and, of course, a day of fun in the snow with BMW performance cars.

If you want to opt for the experience only, then for $4450pp, you can get the jacket, the snow bus transfer, and the experience itself.

I had a mixture of both, so you’ll have to bear with me while I explain a little bit of the luxury side of things. For starters, not having to think about anything when we arrived in New Zealand was top-tier; someone picked me up from the airport, told me where to go, and took me to my gorgeous hotel room at the Millbrook Resort.

A dinner in the historic Arrowtown and then an early morning wake-up preceded the event. I didn’t end up going in the helicopter, which was part of the part of luxury experience package, but we did get a transfer in a fleet of new EV BMWs to the snow bus up to the Alps of Wānaka.

We were taken to a driver training centre, which is also used as a proving ground for several brands as they test their winter driving capabilities. Laid out in the snow for us was a gorgeous array of the BMW M3 Competitions, M3 Touring Competitions, and X3 M40is, ready for a day of being thrashed in adverse conditions.

At our disposal was the BMW Events team with quite the CV across the large group, some driver training experts and all with plentiful racing experience, so you’re in good hands with a bunch of extraordinarily trained professionals.

Our group started the day out with a presentation laying out the activities in store for the day, along with an in-depth explanation of how to control the cars on ice, how to drift and what to expect from how the cars can handle driving on snow.

Surprisingly, the BMWs were not fitted with studded tyres, as I would’ve expected from ice driving. Instead, the factory tyres were swapped out for Bridgestone Blizzak snow tyres, which gave some additional grip but allowed us to slide when we wanted to.

The day was centred around giving us the most amount of time inside the cars as possible, with very short and snappy explanations of the activities to get us out in the cars as soon as possible.

As we buddied up with the people we would be sharing the cars with, we headed out for our first activity, an emergency stop in the snow. This was to show that in case of emergency, we should move away from our instincts of slowly applying pressure to the brakes to prevent a lock-up and instead rely upon the ABS system and jump hard on the brake.

We drove the cars up to 40km/h and then jammed on the brakes to give us the confidence that the ABS would save us in case we were heading towards a ditch or snow mound.

After that was out of the way and we had confidence in the cars, it was time to tackle the slalom course. The cars were pre-set to ease us into hitting the turns on snow and ice, so we started the course with Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) on, and the cars in 4WD focused more on controlling the understeer and making it around the course.

For a car with nearly 400kW, the BMW M3 Competition is extremely easy to control on a surface with next to no grip. I didn’t feel like I needed to tip-toe around, and the instructors actually encouraged us to give the throttle a boot around the corners to promote a slide.

The next lap around, they set us up with M Dynamic Mode (MDM), which lowers a lot of the driver assists to promote more of a slide in the car. Still in 4WD mode, it was an entirely new experience for me despite my drifting experience. The way the car handles and initiates a slide is wildly different from that of a rear-wheel-drive car.

Finally, we had the chance to experience the BMW M3 with next to no assists on and in rear-wheel-drive mode. Despite the fact that we weren’t going any faster than 40km/h, it was an impressively fun sensation to flick the car in between the cones and loop it back around while keeping it sideways through the snow.

Next up was a pretty wild experience. We lined up next to each other in separate cars for a drag race on the ice. There weren’t any rules to this activity; it was more like setting the car up how you like it and then putting your foot to the floor.

Here, we managed to hit speeds above 100km/h on the snow and ice while racing against other people in the BMW M3s and X3 M40is. Let me tell you now, speed feels a whole lot different in the snow. Hitting 100km/h on a surface with no grip feels like 200km/h on a drag strip.

Keeping up with the competitive nature of the day, we moved on to a gymkhana-style side-by-side race. With another BMW M3 heading in the opposite direction, we weaved through cones and looped back again to stop in a box.

The competition got extremely hot as everyone wanted to be crowned champion of the snow against their newly formed friends. The BMW Events staff kept a close eye out to see if we had taken any shortcuts or knocked any cones out.

Next came the highlight of the day, when we would race for top dog on the snow. We would do a full lap around a gymkhana course, incorporating the snow launches we learned in the drag race, the drifting and cornering we learned in the slalom, and the hard braking we learned in our first braking.

To make it even more official, the staff set up a laser line that starts when we cross the line and stops when we cross back over it, measuring your time down to the thousandths of a second to avoid any close calls.

Taking turns, you could really tell that everyone in the group was seriously getting into it. Cones were flying as seconds were knocked off lap times, and the friendly competition turned serious.

After putting in the hard yards, we had a catered lunch and a chance to pester the lovely BMW staff with any driver questions we had.

Finally, it came time for the part of the day I was looking forward to the most, rear-wheel drive drifting on the snow. Again, even though I do a fair bit of drifting in my own time, it was a whole new experience to gain insight from people who do driver training for a living.

The course was again set up in stages so that we could get comfortable with the car instead of just throwing us in the deep end and expecting us to pick it up instantly. Cones were placed out to show us when to initiate the drift, and we received instructions over the radio on our steering and throttle input.

After a few practice runs, we learned how to hold the drift in circles. It quickly became apparent that it’s more like figure skating when drifting on ice than the sharp and aggressive inputs of drifting on tarmac.

Again, it takes you a while to get used to the lack of grip, but it’s like 10 lessons all at once in a contained and safe environment.

To end the day, one of the instructors gave us a full-throttle, sideways lap of the whole complex. Let me tell you that there is no experience similar to sitting in the passenger seat of a BMW going sideways on ice at 130km/h, but it’s incredibly difficult not to let out a little giggle as it seems like you’re with death in a controlled manner.

The whole day was an interesting insight into an experience you’ll find anywhere else in Australia and New Zealand. While you may not have to use the ability to drive on ice ever again after this experience, it extends further into understanding how your performance car handles a lack of grip.

I feel as if even the most experienced drivers could take something away from a course like this. A lot of the drills and layouts were there to promote more trust in the car and your own driving ability rather than just letting everyone loose on the snow in some expensive cars and hoping they come out of it alive.

If you want a day of fun that will leave you a much better driver than when you entered, all while you look at the absolutely gorgeous surrounds of the Southern Alps of New Zealand, then you absolutely cannot overlook the BMW Snow and Ice Experience.

To check out the BMW Snow and Ice Experience and add your name to the waiting list, head here…

The post I drove 100km/h on ice and it was the wake-up call I needed appeared first on Drive.

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